Plastic bags, such as kitchen freezer bags and sandwich bags, have become widely popular due to the convenience they provide and the recent improvements in the design of such bags. However, it has become known that widespread disposal of such bags in landfills causes harm to the environment, due in part to the extended length of time required for the bags to adequately decompose. For this reason, as well as for economic reasons, many people have been washing such bags after use, drying them, and then reusing them instead of disposing of them.
As described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,295,694, issued to Nejezchleb and Nejezchleb on Jan. 3, 1967, a plastic bag will not, if left by itself, adequately dry due to a lack of ventilation caused by the sides of the bag remaining in contact. As a result, several devices have been invented to facilitate the drying of such bags. For example, one such device utilizes a tray with multiple U-shaped bag-supporting members, over which are inverted wet plastic bags. This device holds the sides of the bag apart, allowing air to ventilate the bag and subsequently dry it. However, this device requires more than one U-shaped bag-supporting member if the bag is significantly larger than a single such bag-supporting member. Moreover, if the bag happens to be smaller than the bag-supporting member, this device cannot be used without tearing the bag or modifying the shape of the bag-supporting member, potentially breaking it. Further, this device includes a relatively large support tray, which makes it inconvenient for use on many relatively small kitchen counters, window sills, and the like. Still further, this device is rather difficult to transport since, when disassembling the bag-supporting members from the tray to reduce the size of the device, there is no convenient place to store the bag-supporting members.
Clearly, then, there is a need for a bag holding device that is adaptable to many sizes of bags, that is relatively compact, that is capable of holding more than one bag, and that is easily disassembled and transported. The present invention fulfills these needs and provides further related advantages.